Finding Your Happy Place

 

 

Our spirits have taken a beating for the past year, particularly with regard to the pandemic, and also the current events cycle surrounding the election and January 6.  So it is all the more important to find inner, and outer, resources in the form of places, situations, and activities where we feel safe and happy, and are able to find peace.

I came across an interesting article, Happy Places Are Real: 5 Tips To Help You Find Yours (mindbodygreen.com) which discusses finding the "happy space", whether it is a physical place, or a space within ourselves.

Neo-Jansenism?

 It has been said that there are no new heresies, just recycled old ones.

In this article Michael Sean Winters discusses similarities in some of the problems surfacing in the church today with the rise of Jansenism in the 17th century

Former President Trump (probably) won't be disqualified from running again

A Senate vote on Tuesday indicates that the House impeachment managers have an uphill climb to secure a conviction.

Breaking News: A Catholic (President) attends Mass regularly

 

Sunday services: Biden's faith on display in renewed presidential ritual

As the first president in decades to regularly attend weekly religious services, Joe Biden has plenty of options.

I like this story because in one sense it is not news at all. It is one of those good news stories, life is going along well, things are working that typically gets ignored.  

It is the life of a typical church going, community or professionally active Catholic, finding a way across a busy schedule in multiple locations to celebrate Mass each weekend.

It is also the story of a pastor who after seeing a Catholic attends regularly, but notices that he has not been coming recently, simply says "Is he still on the rolls"  And when the answer is yes, says there is a virtual Mass, two in-person Masses and that he will send a priest to the White House if that is needed.

It is also the story of relationships of pastoral attendance and pastoral care that persisted across time, and space.

On the other hand Presidential Church-going, like church going in general has been declining. So it is breaking news when a president changes all that.  

Will it mean anything? Will many religious leaders show appreciation for Presidential support for this ritual which keeps them in business?  Will some or many liberal, Democratic Catholics return to more frequent church going?  (Perhaps if the culture warriors in Catholicism ignore Biden- not much chance of that, however). 

Note to all pastors and pastoral staff: We now have not only a Pope but a Catholic President who is popular with liberals and Democrats. Maybe now is the time to emphasize the poor, the environment, and social activism to make these people welcome in our parishes!   

The Trump presidency, by the numbers

We checked in once before with Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn, when he shared some of his favorite tweets of 2020.  Now, in this column from January 19, he uses metrics to try to assess just what the Trump presidency has done to our country.  His method is simple: he compares a number of measurements and statistics at the time President Obama passed the presidency to President Trump, to the same stats four years later, as the presidency passes from Trump to President Biden.  In essence, he's comparing the state of the United States at the beginning of the Trump presidency to the state at the end.  Zorn uses the metaphor of a car rental agency comparing the condition of a rental car at the time you drive it off the lot, to the condition when you bring it back.  

Zorn's leanings are liberal, but he also is scrupulously fair in presenting these metrics.  In that spirit, he prefaces the metrics by noting the exogenous shock to our country: the pandemic.  Some of the numbers will have been altered significantly because of the pandemic and its effects.  For example, the unemployment rate has increased from 4.7% at the beginning of Trump's presidency to 6.7% at the end; it was actually lower than 4.7% for the entirety of Trump's presidency - until April 2020, when it skyrocketed.  But even bearing the coronavirus in mind, some of the metrics are surprising.  The entire listing can be read here.  In this post, I'm sharing a small sampling of them, with some brief comments of my own.

Responding to Jesus

 This is my homily for today, the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B.  The readings for today are here.   

A brief explanatory note: the first paragraph of the homily text alludes to a couple of things we did to mark that today is the Sunday of the Word of God: during the Gospel Acclamation, the book of the Gospels was processed through the church, up and down the pew aisles.  As we don't have altar servers during the pandemic, I recruited an adult at each mass to accompany me with a lit torch (processional candle).  In addition, after the proclamation of the Gospel, we "enthroned" the Book of the Gospels on a special stand which faced the people, to try to make it more visible.

Here is the text of the homily:

The Music, Prayers, and Readings of Biden's Inauguration Day Mass

If anyone is interested in the Scripture readings and music used for Joe Biden's Inauguration Day Mass at St. Matthew's Cathedral, NCR has an article here with the details.

 "The Jan. 20 Mass in Washington, D.C., on Inauguration Day morning was closed to the public, but the pastoral associate for liturgy and director of music ministries at the St. Matthew's Cathedral, who helped plan the liturgy, shares here the music, readings and prayer selections. Others involved in the planning of the liturgy included the presider, Jesuit Fr. Kevin O'Brien; the rector, Msgr. Ronald Jameson; the parochial vicar, Fr. Jon Benson; and members of the Biden-Harris inauguration committee."

The whole article is worth reading; I will just quickly summarize the music and Scripture readings.